- If you're driving growth for your SaaS business,
you need to go to market strategy.
When you actually go out there to research all
the different go to market strategies that are out there,
the permutations, the possibilities,
the options, it's super overwhelming even for me
and I know a lot of these.
So in this episode,
I'm going to give you three go to market strategy examples.
I'm gonna give you three examples that you can look at
which will help you determine
which one of these sweet key plays,
these super plays, if you will,
is the right one to drive growth for your SaaS business.
So intro.
What's everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable.
I'm TK and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you
navigate the path to the next stage of growth
with an unstoppable strategy.
So if you are new to the channel, welcome.
Be sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon
so you get notified every single time I drop a new episode
that talks about growing SaaS businesses.
Also if you are part
of my SaaS, Go-To-Market coaching Program.
If you are part of this community, welcome back.
It's really great to have you here.
So on this episode, I'm going to be talking about
go-to-market strategy examples.
What I realized is we did a lot of videos
on how to create an ICP.
We talked about how to use LinkedIn for lead generation.
We talked about what your pricing strategy should be like.
We talked about whether you should do outbound or inbound.
We've talked about all these big pieces.
And we haven't talked about, all right,
what does it go to market strategy really look like?
What is an example of that?
So I'm going to be showing you three critical
go-to-market strategy examples.
And we'll help you talk through which one is the right one
for your SaaS business to drive growth.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm
and let's get right into it.
Okay, so I'm basically going to just map out
these threes go-to-market strategy examples, all right?
The first thing you really need to figure out
before for you go-to-market strategy is
what kind of play is appropriate for your target audience
and for the business that you're building?
Now there's really two kinds of plays that you can have.
You can either have a direct model
or you can have a channel model.
And in the early stages,
and most of the people that I talk with,
are early stage SaaS founders.
They're sub 10 millionaire ARR.
Usually they're trying to get to three millionaire ARR.
those are the people that join my SaaS go to market program.
You wanna pick one, you wanna pick one.
Because in the early days, it can be very, very enticing
to try to spit up all of these.
But it's impossible to be good at any one of these
unless you really focus on it.
So really, what you want to figure out is,
do you want to focus on a direct model?
Or do you want to focus on a channel model?
What's the difference?
A direct model is where you're going direct to the customer,
the consumer, the prospect and you're saying,
"Hey, I have a solution to a problem that you have
and you should buy it."
And you talk to them directly, right?
A channel model is where you actually figure out who are
the people that are already selling
to your target customers
and how do you get them to sell what you have.
Or how do you get them to introduce you to those people
so you can sell them as well.
So that's more of a channel model
where you're going through existing channels.
Now, how do you figure out whether you should go direct
or channel?
99% of the time, if you're an early stage company,
you should go direct.
There's a couple of reasons for this.
Number one, you're too small for channel leaders
to actually notice it.
A lot of times, they'll have bizdev people.
They'll meet with you.
And they'll talk about all these things.
And they'll say they'll introduce you or they'll resell you,
but they're going to wait and see to see if you're worth it
to see if the market really loves what you're doing.
And if the market tells them that they should use it.
So a lot of times, you can burn a lot of calories
trying to build out a channel model,
which is super enticing.
There's a promise of a channel model
is you don't have to build out a sales team.
You barely have to build out a marketing team.
You just have to enable this channel
and give them a cut of revenues.
And they'll do all the heavy lifting for you
through their teams.
It's super enticing.
In the early days, most channels won't really let you in,
won't give you the time of day.
So you're almost always better off
going after a direct model.
Now, when you choose a direct model,
there's really one of two ways to mobilize
your go-to-market strategy.
The first way is to actually do inbound, all right?
The second way is to do outbound.
Now, the same principle applies over here as well.
It can be it can be very enticing
to say we're gonna do all the things
and what will end up happening as we try to do all
the things you won't really hone in
on your go-to-market machine.
You'll be neither here nor there.
And when it comes to inbound,
it generally splits into search,
which is like SEO.
People searching for stuff and then landing on your content.
Or social,
where they find you on social again around your content.
And when it comes to outbound,
it generally breaks down into you're running ads.
Or you're doing pure outbound email
or cold calling.
All right?
So this is what I really wanted to show you.
All these little strategies, all these little tactics
can get super confusing in your head.
I know it does for me.
But when you really lay it all out, there's really three.
You're either going direct inbound,
which a lot of people just refer to as content marketing
or you're going direct outbound where you're running ads.
Or you're actually cold emailing people or calling people
or you're going through a channel, right?
And again, which channel this actually breaks down.
You're either going into a marketplace
and we'll talk a little bit more about that.
Or you're going into
some sort of a cosell
resell relationship.
Right?
So the question is, which one of these is right for you?
Let's walk through this.
The first question is, are you direct or channel?
We already talked about that.
For most early stage companies,
you should really start with direct,
especially if you're trying to really validate
and get traction and get to product market fit, right?
Once you get into direct the question is do you do inbound
or do you do outbound?
Okay, this is a robbery here, right?
There's a trick to this.
What I usually recommend is you should start
with inbound and social.
What I mean by that is you should start
to build out your social presence
and start sharing what you're building out,
if you're in the super early stages.
If you already got a business, you've already got revenues,
then you should start doubling down on search and social
at the same time and really locked down inbound.
Now why start with inbound?
Starting with inbound is always a good idea
because it'll attract the right people into your sphere.
You don't fully know who your ICP is
or the people that are most likely to resonate.
It's like you might know you're selling to salespeople,
but you might not really know exactly
what kind of sales people or what type of sales
or if it's salespeople or some other type of.
Is it software salespeople
or if it's like real estate salespeople.
So inbound is always good to get out there
because you kind of put your message out there
and you see what you attract.
Once you see what you're attract
you can sift and sort through it, and then say,
"You know what this type of people are the best.
Let me go double down on that, right?"
So that's why I always say start with inbound.
Start with the people in your immediate social circle,
friends and family, friends of friends.
And that will help you kind of hone in
on what your ideal customer is
based on the problem you're solving
and help you really refine it.
Once you've done inbound
and you've gotten some traction on it,
then I say turn on outbound.
A lot of times, what people will do
is they'll start with outbound
and start spraying and praying.
Or they'll just start burning a lot of money on ads.
And the problem is,
ads are very much determined on who you're targeting.
Emails are very much determined on who you're targeting
and also what you're saying.
And a lot of times these are you know,
Facebook is a giant machine gun.
If you download an email automation tool,
it's a giant machine gun.
But then what ends up happening is
if you start with outbound and start doing these two things,
you're almost like,
it's almost like firing a giant machine gun with blanks.
You don't have quality bullets.
So this is why I always say start with inbound.
And then spin into outbound
once you've really stress tested your core messaging,
your core ICP, and you know exactly the type of person
that's gonna buy from you.
And based on that you can start to spin up outbound.
Once you've done outbound, then I would go into channel.
Because then you've got traction, you've got credibility,
you've got customer success stories.
And you can go into these channels
where your people are already aggregating
and there's a company,
there's companies spending marketing budgets to sell to
the people that would buy your product.
You can go into them and say,
"Hey, this is the exact messaging we use.
This exact value proposition we have.
This is the exact type of customer that loves our products.
Here's the customer success stories."
And then you can go hook into either one of
the marketplaces they have.
Or you can get into some sort of a coselling, reselling,
comarketing arrangement,
so you can get access to your ICP.
And so these are essentially
the three critical go-to-market strategy examples
and they're almost all build on another.
All the other stuff is essentially tactics.
They're little things that you can try.
But fundamentally, what you're really doing
for you go-to-market strategy
is you're starting with really strengthening inbound
to hone in on who you're selling to,
what your strategic message is
and really getting that flow going.
Then you turn on outbound to go after
that specific group of people and more people like that.
And then you're going into channels to say,
"Hey, we already sell to these people,
you sell to these people, let's do something together
and we'll go faster."
And they essentially kind of build on top of each other
one after another.
Now you're starting to see how
this doesn't have to be that complicated.
Building a go-to-market machine,
you just really need to pick on
the key go-to-market strategy example
that I have added here.
You want to start with direct and go with inbound,
then you want to turn on outbound
and then you want to turn on channels.
You go in these steps, life can be a lot easier
in driving growth for your SaaS business.
If you starting to see that be sure to go ahead
and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Also comment below with a yes if you're starting to see
what I'm talking about.
If you starting to get some clarity around this.
Now let's talk about one last thing.
Here's the key thing.
Let's go back to that analogy
that I used around machine guns and bullets, right?
Each of these things hook into real platforms, right?
If you think about search, YouTube is a real platform.
People are searching for stuff on YouTube
and I give them videos.
And then I introduce them to my coaching programs like
that's a real inbound content machine that I have.
Social is just the same.
Social, you can think of YouTube as social,
but really, I think about LinkedIn
and Twitter are social, right?
Here's the thing.
These are incredibly powerful platforms.
And you think about Facebook ads and Google ads,
they will gladly take your money, right?
You think about the email automation tools,
they'll also gladly take your money
and send a lot of emails.
Here's the thing.
All of this is dependent on the core, your core strategy.
And there's certain things in your core strategy
that if you don't define,
you're gonna be firing blank bullets.
What are those things?
There are certain key things they actually have to define
and learn and kind of iterate on, right?
The first thing is your ICP,
your ideal customer profile.
Who are your ideal customers?
Where do they live?
What do they look like?
What jobs do they have?
And why do they buy?
What's the core problem that they have?
What are some big macro trends happening with them?
This is what determines your ideal customer profile
and also determines your initial
customer profile.
Meaning you can have a really large team
and a very big ideal customer profile,
but there's always gonna be a subset of those people
that are more likely to buy now.
And that's going to get you to your next stage of growth.
Let's just say you're a million now
you want to get to three million ARR.
Your initial customer profile is going to be the one
that really gets you that three million
if you really focus on it
because they're going to move the fastest.
So you're going to have to figure out how to define that
as part of your core strategy.
The second thing you're going to have to define
is your strategic narrative.
This includes your positioning.
It also includes your value, prop.
Essentially, it explains why you exist,
what's the big problem that exists for your ICP
and how you solve it, right?
And usually I, this whole thing, I kind of call a manifesto
and I've talked about this in this channel before.
And then the third thing you need to do
is actually run a consistent
Broadway show.
And that's where really all of this comes in, right?
So you can do all of these knit things you can write.
You know, post a YouTube video
or you can do a LinkedIn post.
And you can actually email 100 people or you can run ads
and burn $100 or $1,000, or even $30,000.
All of these things are easy to do.
They're giant machines guns.
They'll gladly take your money and your time.
However, unless you do these three things, they won't work.
You'll be firing blank bullets.
You'll be burning your brand.
You'll be burning your reputation.
And you'll be getting mixed signals.
You won't really know if it's working.
When you actually take the time to build out your ICP,
your strategic narrative,
and then you run a consistent Broadway show,
either an inbound or an outbound.
And then with channels when you do that consistently
in what I call a Broadway show,
that's when this whole thing starts to come together, right?
That's where the power is.
And a lot of times two things happen.
Founders get overwhelmed by all the permutations
that live over here, right?
Do I do inbound?
Do I do outbound?
Do I do Twitter?
Do I do LinkedIn, right?
That's not important.
And also what they do is they get overwhelmed,
they kind of get scattered across all of these.
And at the same time,
they don't do the work to really get their core right.
So that they're firing real quality bullets.
You guys starting to get this?
If you are starting to understand
how all this comes together and at the end of the day,
there's really these three go to market strategies
that you have to pick between.
Inbound, outbound, channels.
And you go one after the other
and you can compound and grow it.
That's where the power really comes together.
So if you start to get this hit me with a yes
in the comments below.
Smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And also Lastly, be sure to share this video
with your teammates.
If they understand this on what's going to drive growth of
their SaaS business and how to think about building out
their go-to-market strategy,
using these examples that I showed here,
then everyone starts to get aligned,
you start to grow a lot faster.
Now through building out your SaaS business
and you're driving to growth.
And you're looking at, all right,
how do we get this go-to-market strategy right?
How to drive growth?
You've got some revenues,
say you're trying to get to 3 millionaire ARR
or 10 millionaire ARR.
If you're trying to get to that next stage,
I encourage you to check out my SaaS go-to-market program.
Inside of my SAS go to market coaching program,
we essentially help you with this core strategy.
And then we help you run this core Broadway show.
So the way this is how it works.
Essentially, it's a coaching program and a training program.
You're going to be doing all of this anyway,
but we give you a proven framework and a blueprint to follow
so that you can do it
and I'll actually coach you through the whole thing.
So if you're interested in that, go to tkkader.com/gtm.
When you go over there, you'll learn more about the program
and if you hit the giant yellow button,
you'll be able to schedule a strategy call with me.
Inside of a strategy call, we'll actually talk to
where you are in your business,
where you're trying to get to.
And based on that, I'll tell you,
if we can actually help you through
the go-to-market program.
If we can you'll be able to get come on
and be able to get hooked in.
You can create a very differential go-to-market strategy,
expanding from inbound to outbound to channel,
using these three core things
that you actually define inside of the program
I help you through.
And that way you'll be able
to actually accelerate your growth to the next stage,
whether it be 3 million or 10 million
depending on where you are right now?
All right, cool.
So that's what I want to do walk you through today,
go-to-market strategy examples.
Go check out the SaaS go-to-market program.
If you're literally working through this problem right now,
you don't want to go at it alone.
You want a framework to follow,
you want my coaching.
And also be sure to smash that like button for
the YouTube algorithm.
Now we put a lot of effort into these videos.
So it means a lot to my team and I if you also share this
with a friend or co founder.
We want to get these videos out
to as many SaaS vendors as possible
so we can have maximum impact.
I wanna thank you for joining
and remember everyone you strategy for their life
and their business.
But when you are with us yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK.
I'll see you the next episode
or the one on one strategy call
that you can go book right now.
Take care.
So are you starting to see how
that doesn't have to be that complicated.
Let's start over I screwed up.
All right. Sorry.